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Monday, August 23, 2010

First graphics mod, 4.1, MP & Zombie mode

GFX MOD
User Chiko has made a graphics mod.
Check out the MODs page above!

4.1
Should be out within a week. I'm testing and consider adding/changing a few minor stuff to make the wait worth it.

Multiplayer mode?No.
There is a demand from a multiplayer mode. Sorry but my answer won't change : no.
Since I keep getting that asked, even if the answer is in FAQ, I'll explain the reasons.

The game engine is purely Single-Player. That is, I designed the game architecture and done the code to support Single-Player only. Even without changing the gameplay, a multiplayer mode as people want would requiere a different kind of architecture, a Client-Server architecture. Changing architecture means rewriting an insane amount of the code. Its easy to do a Single-Player engine from a Multi-Player engine (eg: you can code fake clients or bots), the otherway around is not and at best is cumbersome both for the dev (repeatedly failing sanity check) and the players (lots of data exhanged over the network for each game turn).

The gameplay, a turn-by-turn roguelike, is not suited to multiplayer at all. You would have to wait for the other guys to move to do anything. Its ok for a strategy game where turns are long and you can use the time to think, its not ok in a game with very short turns and you act more than you think. Again, changing this aspect to better suit mutli-player means rewriting a bunch of code.

Play as Zombie mode? Maybe.
If I ever get to the point where me and the players are satisfied with the "play as living" mode (the current one), and it has everything I wanted it to have, and it is balanced, and fun to play, and this and that, I'll consider doing a "play as zombie" mode.
Contrary to the MP mode, the game architecture would support it with no problems. The only major annoyance would be the UI and a couple of things related to how the player is handled.
The way I see it, there would be two modes:

Start the game as an undead instead of a survivor.

You died, continue your game as your own zombie.

I personally don't like mode 2, because this would make the living part of the game much less interesting ("I died. So what? I continue as zombie.") but I'll add it. For this reason, the game won't allow switching between the two freely during the game (no revive etc...).

If people really want you to make multiplayer, heres what you should do. In your next update tell the fellow survivors that if they really truely want multiplayer they should donate to you to "motivate" you to make multiplayer. if you don't like the idea, just don't do it.

You could have it like this. The people that fund you wouldnt have to pay for multiplayer when its finished. and the ones that didnt fund would have to pay to getr multiplayer. So multiplayer would be a seperate download/game.